Warren listed as minority at U Penn

Facing a flap over her past claims of Native American ancestry, Elizabeth Warren was identified as a minority faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania, where the Massachusetts Senate candidate worked from 1987 to 1995, according to the Associated Press.

A committee established to review the status of minorities on the faculty of the university produced a report which noted that only eight of the 112 awards given out during a 13-year span were given to minority teachers. Warren was listed among the eight minority teachers who had won a teacher award. The report was written in 2005, a decade after Warren had left the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania.

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The new information gives more context to the claims of Warren’s opponent, Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), who slammed her earlier this week for “serious questions [that] have been raised about the legitimacy of Elizabeth Warren’s claims to Native American ancestry and whether it was appropriate for her to assume minority status as a college professor.”

Harvard Law School had previously touted Warren as a minority hire, and she had been listed as a minority in a law school directory between 1986 and 1995, according to the Boston Herald.

Other documents were also obtained by the Associated Press showing that she identified as “white” on an employment record at the University of Texas and, while applying for admission to Rutgers Law School, she declined to do so under a program for minority students.

Warren’s campaign insisted that the candidate had never leaned on her Native American roots.

“At every law school where Elizabeth was recruited to teach, it has been made absolutely clear she was hired based on merit; on her accomplishments and ability,” Warren spokeswoman Alethea Harney told the AP Thursday. “Documents from the college and law school from which she graduated show that Elizabeth did not seek special treatment by acknowledging her Native American heritage.”